Glinda

>She looked wonderful. She had filled out some. That wraithlike beauty had bloomed but not coarsened.

>Glinda would start as if from a frightful dream, and nestle in nearer to Elphaba, who seemed at night never to sleep. Daytimes, the long hours spent in poorly sprung carriages, Elphaba would nod off against Glinda's shoulder.

>No sooner had I arrived than they deferred to me, introducing me as a witch. I tried to correct them, a sorceress is really much more apt, but never mind. It was no doubt the outfit, it cowed them. I was in a salmon-pink fantasy that day, and really it suited me.

>It's good to see me, isn't it? No need to answer, that was rhetorical.

>Well, there isn't anything inherently either religious or nonreligious
about sorcery...There isn't anything inherently
pleasure faithist about it either.

>The magic is a local skill, a contribution to community well-being. It
doesn't have to supplant religion